Deep Storm

20

For a moment, the stateroom was quiet. Crane sat motionless, struggling to absorb what he had just heard, as the meaning of Asher's words worked its way through him.

"Take a minute, Peter," Asher said kindly. "I know it's a hard thing to get your mind around."

"I'm not sure I believe it," Crane replied at last. "You sure there's no mistake?"

"No mistake. Mankind has no technology capable of inserting a mechanical device beneath the earth's crust-let alone a device that can emit such a signal. Because of the natural phase change that occurs at the Moho, listening devices on the earth's surface are neither sensitive nor technologically advanced enough to pick up certain kinds of waves from below the crust. But because of the mid-Atlantic ridge, the Moho is unusually shallow here. That-along with the depth of the Storm King well holes-led to the accidental discovery of the signal."

Crane shifted in his seat. "Go on."

"Of course, the government's immediate goal became to excavate to the source of the signal, determine what it was. It took quite some time to get the project ramped up, the necessary equipment in place. The depth we're operating at makes things extremely difficult-this Facility was built for other purposes and was not meant to operate anywhere near this deep. Hence the surrounding dome."

"How long did the preparations take, exactly?"

"Twenty months."

"That's it?" Crane felt stunned. "General Motors can't even design a car prototype in twenty months."

"That shows you just how seriously the government is taking this project. In any case, the excavation has been online for almost two months now, and the pace is frantic. Significant progress has been made. A vertical shaft has been dug beneath the Facility. We're excavating toward the source of the signal."

"How is that possible? Isn't the rock molten at that depth?"

"The crust is relatively thin, the geothermic values are low, and radiogenic heat production is far less than it would be in the continental crust. P-wave and S-wave readings indicate the lithosphere is only about three kilometers beneath us-'only' being a relative term, of course."

Crane shook his head. "There must be some logical, some terrestrial, explanation. Some Russian device, or maybe Chinese. Or some naturally occurring phenomenon. If I learned anything from that marine geology course, it's that we know precious little about the composition of our own planet, save for the thinnest outer layer."

"It's not Russian or Chinese. And I'm afraid there are too many things that don't add up for it to be naturally occurring. The geology of the impact, for example. Normally, for something to be embedded so deep in the earth, you'd expect to find a serious geologic disturbance-the undersea equivalent of Meteor Crater. But in this case, the layers of sedimentation above the anomaly are in almost perfect synch with the surrounding matrix. Think of a child digging a hole on the beach, dropping a shell into it, and putting the sand back in place. There's no earthly phenomenon to explain that."

"But there has to be," said Crane.

"No. I'm afraid the true explanation lies beyond. You see, certain…artifacts have been retrieved." And at this, Asher nodded to the silent man in the lab coat. The man walked toward a far wall, knelt, and opened a plastic locker that sat there. He withdrew something, rose, and handed it to Asher.

Crane looked on curiously. It was a cube-shaped object, encased in some kind of metal shielding. Asher glanced toward him, met his eyes.

"Remember what I told you, Peter," he said. "About the threshold." And then, gently, he pulled away the shielding and offered the cube to Crane.

It was hollow, made of transparent Plexiglas. Every edge was carefully sealed. Something was inside. Crane took it from Asher's hands, drew it close-then gasped aloud in surprise.

Floating in the dead center of the cube was a small object, no larger than a domino. It emitted a laserlike beam of light, pencil thin and intensely white, toward the ceiling. Impossibly, the object itself was of no single, definable color, but rather a coruscation, shimmering and rainbow hued: gold and violet and indigo and cinnamon and other colors Crane had never imagined, all in a constant state of change. The colors seemed to come from deep within the object, rising outward from some central core, as if the little object burned with some strange inner fire.

He turned the Plexiglas cube over and over, staring at the thing within it. No matter how he turned it, the object inside stayed dead center. He peered at the makeup of the cube itself, searching for hidden wires or magnets. But it was a simple cube of clear plastic-there were no tricks.

He shook the cube, first gently, then with severity. The glowing, pulsing thing at its center bobbled ever so slightly up and down at this treatment, always coming to rest in the exact center, where it continued to float serenely, its thin beam of white light pointing straight upward.

He brought the cube up close, staring at the object with openmouthed curiosity. He noticed the edges of the domino-sized thing were not, in fact, exactly defined. Rather, the object seemed to pulsate faintly: edges grew sharp, then softened again. It was almost as if the object's mass and form were in continuous flux.

He looked up from the cube. Asher was standing there, smiling, hand outstretched. After the briefest hesitation, Crane reluctantly handed him the cube. The chief scientist replaced it inside the shielding and gave it to his assistant, who returned it to the storage locker.

Crane sat back, blinking. "What the hell is it?" he asked after a moment.

"We don't know its purpose is, exactly."

"What's it made of?"

"Unknown."

"Is it dangerous? Could it be the source of the problems here?"

"I wondered the same thing, of course. We all did. But, no: it's harmless."

"You're sure about that?"

"The very first tests we did were to see if it was throwing off any radiation other than light. But it's not. It's completely inert-all subsequent tests have confirmed that. The reason I placed it inside that Plexiglas cube is because it's a little hard to deal with otherwise-it always finds the precise center of a room in which to hover."

"Where'd you get it?"

"It was uncovered during the excavation of the shaft. Along with well over a dozen others to date." Asher paused. "Our job when we started was clear-cut: dig as quickly as possible, within safety parameters, down toward the source of the signal. He gestured toward the locker. But then, when we began to discover those…well, things grew more complicated."

He sat down again, leaned in, and continued in a conspiratorial whisper. "They're remarkable, Peter-even more remarkable than they look. For one thing, they seem to be essentially indestructible. They're impervious to anything we've subjected them to in controlled environments. Some kinds of damage, like radiation, they absorb; others they reflect. And another thing: they seem to act as capacitors."

"Capacitors?" Crane repeated. "Like batteries?"

Asher nodded.

"What kind of power output?"

"We haven't been able to measure the top end. When we put conductors on them, they red-lined even our most powerful measuring devices."

"And what was the measurement?"

"One trillion watts."

"What? That little thing? Storing a thousand gigawatts' worth of energy?"

"You could put that in a car and it would provide enough electricity to power the vehicle for its lifetime-one hundred thousand miles. And there's something else." Asher reached into a pocket of his lab coat, pulled out a small manila envelope, and handed it to Crane.

Crane opened it and pulled out the sheet within. It was a computer printout, a repeating burst of short numbers:

"What's this?" he asked.

"That beam of light the marker's emitting? It's not continuous; it's actually pulsing, millions of times a second. The pulses are very regular: on and off."

"Ones and zeros. Digital."

"I believe so. It's what drives every computer on every desktop in the world. It's how neurons fire in our brains. It's a fundamental law of nature. This little device might be incredibly sophisticated, but why wouldn't it communicate digitally?" Asher tapped the sheet. "A sequence eighty bits long, repeating over and over. It's substantially shorter than the other message, by the way-the one transmitted from beneath the Moho, the one that was initially discovered."

"The other message, you say. So you think this pulse of light is trying to tell us something?"

"Yes I do-if we can decrypt it."

Crane raised the sheet. "May I keep this?"

Asher hesitated. "Very well. But don't show it to anybody."

Crane returned the sheet to the envelope, placed it in his desk. "These artifacts-"

"We call them markers. Or sentinels."

"Why sentinels?"

"Because it's almost as if they've been waiting, watching, all these years, to offer us something."

Crane thought for a moment. "So you're digging toward the source of the signal. What then?"

"There, too, things have gotten a little more complicated." Asher paused again. "Ultrasonic sensors we've lowered into the shaft…they've picked up evidence of something below the artifact field. A large object, buried even more deeply than the source of the signal."

"What kind of object?"

"We know it is torus shaped. We know it's extremely large-miles across. Beyond that, nothing."

Crane shook his head. "But you must have some theories."

"About what it's doing here? Certainly." Asher seemed a little more at ease now, like someone who'd unburdened himself of a painful truth. "After extensive discussion, the consensus among the scientists and the military here was that something has been left behind for humanity to discover, when sufficiently advanced."

"You mean, like a gift?"

"You could call it that. Who's to say which discoveries mankind is responsible for, and which were given us, one way or another? Who's to say, for example, that fire wasn't a gift from beyond the stars? Or iron? Or the know-how for building pyramids?"

"A gift from beyond the stars," Crane repeated dubiously.

"The Greeks believed fire came from the gods. Other peoples have similar myths. Maybe there's a pattern here? Once we had technology advanced enough to pick up a signal from beneath the Moho-once we could actually dig down to the beacon-we would be considered ready for the next leap forward."

"And so this buried object you're digging toward contains useful technology of some kind? Benevolent technology we can discover once we're ready to make use of it?"

"Exactly. Such as the technology that created the device I just showed you. Something that would help humanity to develop further, make that next leap."

There was a silence as Crane digested this.

"So what's the problem?" he asked at last.

"At first, I was as certain of all this as the rest. But lately I'm not so sure. See, everybody wants to believe there's something wonderful down there. My scientists are starry-eyed, dreaming of entire new frontiers of knowledge. The Navy spooks are drooling over the possibility of new technology that might be weaponized. But how can we be sure what's there? These markers we've found are like a trail of bread crumbs, promising tastier things. But until their signals are translated, we can't know what's really buried below them."

Asher wiped his brow again. "Then something happened. We'd always assumed, Peter, that the artifact was buried millions of years ago. But a couple of days back we discovered the burial was relatively recent-around A.D. 1400. That's when I realized that sightings, actual sightings, of the burial event might be part of the written record. So I sent a researcher around the region, visiting libraries, abbeys, universities-any place that might have eyewitness accounts. And at Grimwold Castle, an old monastery off the coast of Scotland, we found one." A dark look crossed his face. "It made for disturbing, frightening reading."

"And you're positive? That this account you found describes the actual burial, I mean."

"There's no way to be sure."

"Can I read it?"

"I'll get a copy to you. But the point is this: assuming it does describe the burial event, this eyewitness account is about as clear a go slow message as I can imagine."

Crane shrugged. "Makes sense. Especially since you haven't yet deciphered the digital signal."

"Except the Navy keeps moving ahead with greater and greater speed. Admiral Spartan and I don't see eye to eye on the matter. His worst fear is that other nations will learn of the discovery. He wants the object exposed and penetrated with all possible speed, and samples of whatever's inside retrieved for study."

"Does anybody else outside the classified sector know of this?"

"A few. Rumors circulate. Most suspect it's more than Atlantis." Abruptly, Asher rose and began pacing. "Anyway, there's another reason for caution. We know that the crust is composed of three layers-the sediment layer, the basement layer, and the oceanic layer. We've dug through the first two and are almost into the third and deepest layer. Below that is the Moho. The thing is, nobody really knows for certain what the Moho is, or what will happen when we hit it. We need to proceed with caution. But the more I've protested, the more I and the NOS have been marginalized. More military are arriving now, and they're no longer regular Navy. They're 'black ops'-and very scary."

"People like Korolis," Crane said.

At the name, a look of anger passed briefly over Asher's face. "Korolis requested them, and they're reporting directly to him. In any case, my fear is that Spartan may soon take full command of the operation, with Korolis as his enforcer. If I object too loudly, I might be relieved of my position, expelled from the station." Asher stopped pacing and stared at Crane. "And that's where you come in."

Crane stared back in surprise. "Me?"

"I'm very sorry, Peter. I never wanted to burden you with this knowledge-or this responsibility. I'd hoped the medical problem would be solved quickly and you could return to the surface, still believing we'd found Atlantis. But with the discovery of this eyewitness account, and given Spartan's increasingly aggressive behavior…well, you're the only option I have left."

"But why me? You're taking a huge risk just by telling me all this."

Asher smiled wearily. "I did my homework, remember? My people are scientists. They're too intimidated by men like Korolis to ever help me. But you: you're not only qualified to treat undersea ailments, you also served on an intelligence-gathering submarine. And I'm afraid that's just what this might soon become: an intelligence mission. And maybe more."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that every day, they're getting closer to the Moho. I can't wait any longer. One way or another, we have to know what's down there-before Spartan's digging machines get to it."

"What makes you sure I'll fall in on your side? I'm ex-military, as you point out. I might agree with Admiral Spartan."

Asher shook his head. "Not you. Now, listen-don't repeat a word of this to anybody." He hesitated. "Maybe none of this will be necessary. Maybe our analysts will finish decrypting those markers tomorrow, or the next day, and all I've said will become moot." He nodded at the man standing beside the evidence locker, who throughout the conversation hadn't said a single word. "This is John Marris. He's my own cryptanalyst, and he's working night and day on the problem. Now, what I want you to do-"

At that moment, a sharp rap sounded on the door. It was repeated again, and then again.

Crane looked at Asher. The chief scientist had frozen in place beside the chair, his lined face suddenly pale. He gave his head a violent shake.

Another rap, louder, more insistent. "Dr. Crane!" boomed a gravelly voice from the corridor.

Crane turned toward the door.

"Wait!" Asher said in a low, urgent voice.

But at that moment the door opened. And Admiral Spartan stood silhouetted in the light of the corridor, a red all-access passcard in his hand, flanked by marines with M1 carbines in their hands.